Eden Falls

by Sanderson, Jane

  ‘Ghastly get-ups,’ Hugh said.

  He meant the plus fours and jaunty stockings. In the Whittam dining room, a chap might not be able to find a waiter for love nor money, but he’d never sit down to dinner in tweed.

  ‘Americans,’ said Silas bleakly.

  ‘Have you chosen?’ Hugh said. ‘I might try the trout.’ He flicked through the pages of the menu, which was as thick as a periodical. ‘How do they manage to offer so much, and do it so well?’

  Silas’s menu lay untouched on the table. He ignored Hugh’s question – again – and instead skewered him with a hard stare.

  ‘Now I understand,’ he said. ‘Professional espionage my eye. You got me here in order to strengthen your argument. To hasten my progress towards what you consider to be the inevitable.’

  Hugh arranged his face into a mask of innocence, then looked up.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said evenly. ‘I simply think we need to keep an eye on what the opposition is up to.’

  ‘You thought you’d rub my nose in their slick operation: make me see what a hopeless case we have in the Whittam Hotel.’

  Hugh shrugged, conceding the point. ‘Well all right, yes, I suppose there was an element of that in my calculation. But you have to admit, they have polish.’

  ‘And we,’ said Silas, standing up, ‘have a potential gold mine. If you’re unable to see that, you’re not the second-in-command I thought you were.’ He placed pointed emphasis on ‘second’ – as if, thought Hugh, he could ever forget who was in charge. Silas stalked to the door and the heels of his glossy shoes clipped crisply on the parquet, an audible accompaniment to his extreme displeasure. Hugh was clearly expected to follow; they had driven here in the Model K and it was a long walk back without it. But it seemed, to Hugh, of the utmost importance to stay put, and when the young waiter appeared at his side, all anxious concern and enquiry, Hugh simply flashed his charming smile and ordered not just the trout but also a half-bottle of champagne. He liked it here. There was a pleasant atmosphere – now that Silas had gone – and the clientele seemed, for the most part, urbane and potentially interesting. Certainly, if he were a traveller to this island and had to choose between the Mountain Spring and the Whittam, he knew where he’d be resting his head.

  At Musgrave Market the heat of the day was starting to roast the tomatoes on the cart, and even before the sun came up they’d been past their best. Ruby picked one up, sniffed it, squeezed it gently and rejected it: too soft, on the turn. The stall-holder, an old man with a long, thin face and a wiry puff of grey hair, sat on a stool beside his produce and picked his yellow teeth with the sharp end of a curved knife. He watched Ruby’s every move as if, she thought derisively, she might be about to make a run for it with his inferior wares. He had yams too, and okra, and they looked better than the tomatoes, but Ruby was affronted now so she walked on. Everyone sold the same vegetables, anyway; she didn’t need to buy them from someone who didn’t know the difference between a common thief and a respectable woman. She moved along purposefully, browsing the stalls, lost in her task.

  She was a single-minded shopper and her determination sometimes gave an impression of unfriendliness, though this was misleading. There were plenty of people who came to the market to be sociable, and Ruby didn’t begrudge them, not at all. But who knew what treasures might be snapped up by others while no-account nonsense was swapped with a neighbour? No, the market was a serious place, intended for a serious purpose, and Ruby was only willing to part with her money when she was sure there wasn’t better to be had elsewhere. It made a slow business of shopping, though, and so far she had only a calabash, pimentos and a pound of salted codfish; there was plenty she still needed. She glanced up at the courthouse clock and then down again at the contents of the straw basket, which she carried not on her head but in the crook of her arm in the manner of an Englishwoman. Tomatoes, cassava, sweet potatoes, okra and, if they were good and fresh, some sprats for Saturday breakfast: these were all still to be purchased. She continued on, a small line of concentration creasing her brow.

  A commotion ahead, a small scream followed by a hubbub of mingled exclamation and laughter, drew Ruby’s eye away from the produce. She craned her neck slightly to see the source of the disturbance, which sounded, to her, more threatening than the usual verbal jostling that periodically erupted in the crowded marketplace. A woman appeared to be on the floor, on her hands and knees, though it was hard to see what she was at because the crowd around her had closed in, forming a ragged circle. Ruby moved a little closer, propelled by a protective instinct, alarmed by the crowd and what felt like menace behind their catcalls and whistles. She could see better now, and the woman was scrabbling at yams and green bananas in the dust, but two young men in the circle around her were kicking the produce, rolling the yams like footballs and flicking the bananas up into the air. The laughter and jeering that accompanied their antics had an uncomfortable quality, a recognition of its own inappropriate cruelty, but still it continued.

  Ruby was seized by fury, and she rushed at the crowd like a small tornado, barging through its ranks with a kind of howling admonishment that had the immediate effect of splintering the cordon and silencing its noise. The basket on her arm became a weapon, and she swung it wildly at one of the young men, bringing its calabash-weight hard against his ear.

  ‘You shameful creatures! Leave her be! Leave her be!’

  Ruby’s voice possessed authority and this, together with the basket whirling about her like a medieval flail, caused the crowd to fall back, not resentfully but almost with relief, as if they’d merely been waiting for someone to end it. What laughter there was now, was directed at the fellow with the swollen ear, who clutched it with tender concern and wailed a self-pitying lament.

  ‘Me ear ripped off,’ he moaned with a rising pitch of hysteria. ‘Me kyaan hear. You done ripped off me ear and me kyaan hear.’

  Ruby cut her eyes at him contemptuously and then dropped to her knees beside the woman on the ground. Unimpeded by her tormentors, she had now regained most of her goods, which she was piling hastily into the big rush bankra by her side. She said not a word to Ruby, nor caught her eye, and when Ruby retrieved the last of the yams the woman took it from her silently and rammed it into the basket with the rest. But then, when she made to stand, she gave a pitiful cry and placed herself gingerly back on the ground.

  ‘What is it?’ Ruby said. ‘Are you hurt?’

  Finally the woman looked at Ruby directly, and at once she recognised her. It was Mr Silas’s live-in help, the Martiniquan, and this made some small sense of the ruckus that had ended with her and her vegetables on the dusty ground of the market place.

  ‘Justine,’ said Ruby. ‘Is that correct?’

  The woman nodded. She was very dark, with beautiful eyes that registered hurt and her lips, full and the colour of cherries, were down-turned like an unhappy child’s.

  ‘Here,’ Ruby said, standing. ‘Take my arm.’

  Though she looked profoundly reluctant, Justine reached up and used Ruby’s strong, supporting arm to get awkwardly to her feet. She staggered, seemed somewhat faint and, evidently, was in considerable pain. At the same moment she and Ruby both looked down to see an ugly, reproachful bloom of fresh blood on the vibrant yellow fabric of Justine’s dress. Wordlessly, Ruby reached down for the loaded bankra and placed it expertly on top of her own head. Then she slung her shopping basket back on to one arm and gave the other arm to Justine. Together they made their way slowly through the market place and people fell away from them in mingled fear and respect, clearing a path.

  Chapter 16

  Ruby took Justine home; that is, Scotty did. He had the donkey cart and was on his way back out of town with nothing on it but linens from the washerwoman, and because he had a soft spot for Ruby he agreed to let the silent Martiniquan ride beside him. Ruby sat on the cart, on a tied bundle of pillowcases, and she wedged the shopping beside her so that, if Scotty hit a rut in the road
, those yams wouldn’t be back rolling in the dust.

  ‘You know she obeah woman,’ Scotty had muttered to her after Justine had been helped up on to the seat, by now with blood trailing in lines from her knee to her shin. ‘What she done hide in dat bankra? Chicken feet? Dead man’s fingers?’

  ‘Cho!’ Ruby hissed back at him. ‘Hush your nonsense. You know no such thing.’

  ‘I just sayin’ what ever’body say.’ Scotty made a stirrup with his linked hands and hoiked Ruby up onto the back of the cart, efficiently, if inelegantly.

  ‘Then you’re a fool,’ Ruby said. ‘Or a parrot, repeating what you hear.’

  He rolled his eyes at her and grinned.

  ‘Miss Hitey-Titey,’ he said. If he’d dared, he would have kissed her rump, which for an enticing moment was level with his face. ‘You de finest piece o’ goods I ever carried on me cart.’

  ‘Get on,’ Ruby said, though not crossly, ‘before the poor woman expires.’

  He loped to the front of the cart and climbed up, sliding his body on to the seat next to Justine, who didn’t register his presence but sat rigid and straight, even when he shook the reins and the mule lurched forwards with a violent jerk.

  ‘Where we headin’?’ Scotty said, twisting round so that Ruby could hear him over the rattle of the wheels.

  ‘To my house,’ she said. ‘I need to fix up that bleeding. Then on to Sugar Hill.’

  They exchanged a strange, guarded look before Scotty turned round again, to keep the mule in a straight line. Nobody went to Sugar Hill who didn’t live or work there. If it were up to Scotty he’d be dropping this woman at the end of Sugar Hill Lane. Correction: if it were up to Scotty she wouldn’t be on the cart at all. Ruby Donaldson didn’t know trouble when she looked it in the face.

  Ruby and Roscoe lived in the wooden house that her great-grandfather had built with his bare hands nearly ninety years ago. Here and there were amendments and additions, made necessary usually either by the weather or the expanding family: a replacement roof when a hurricane stole the original one; an extra room, tacked on to the side of the house; a new chimney, when the brick oven went in. There were two rooms upstairs and three down, but the staircase was outside because Great-Gran’daddy Donaldson forgot to build one within the walls. It was only when he moved in with his wife and children that he realised there was no means to access the upper floor, of which, until that point, he had been immensely proud. But the outdoor staircase did the job well enough: at least, it did when he’d knocked out a hole for the door at the top. Great-Gran’daddy and Great-Gran’mammy Donaldson had been freed even before the Emancipation Act made it compulsory. According to family legend, he had earned their liberty by being a hero; when the overseer’s house went up in a blaze Great-Gran’daddy had climbed the walls and pulled out every one of the five little white children sleeping upstairs. He had thrown them from the window and Great-Gran’mammy had caught them in her apron. This last detail sounded unlikely to Ruby, but still, she’d passed the story on to Roscoe, who would doubtless do the same, come the time. Whatever the truth of it, the Donaldsons – who had been given their name by their Scottish owner and, out of gratitude for their freedom, kept it for ever – had been set up with a hand cart, a sack of flour, a crate of cassavas and a hessian bag of tools, including their old cane bills. The telling of the legend always went that they felt like the king and queen of Jamaica, not because of their possessions but because they went hand in hand away from the sugar plantation and nobody set the dogs on them. They walked for two weeks before they finally stopped and built a house. They were grateful to their old master, but they didn’t want him for a neighbour.

  For a while after Roscoe was born, Ruby had lived here with her mammy and daddy, but they were both dead now, and for just the two of them Great-Gran’daddy’s house was really quite spacious. Ruby cherished and cared for it. She’d painted the outside blue and yellow, and every year, before the rains, she painstakingly applied a fresh coat of paint. Great-Gran’daddy had grown vegetables, and Great-Gran’mammy had been a higgler, selling at the market whatever she couldn’t use herself. They had fended well for themselves, improved their lot, handed on to their sons the ability to take pleasure in a long day’s work and an appreciation of the joy of a free man’s wage. Now their original plot was tended by Ruby; she grew small quantities of breadfruit, callaloo, sweet peppers and plantain. She had an ackee bush, which had sprung up of its own accord like a gift from heaven, and Bombay mangoes lolled heavy on their branches just by the small porch, close enough that you could reach out and pick the fruit without leaving your chair.

  But what she loved best was her medicine garden: fever grass, vervine, wild sage, cow’s foot, cerassee, aloe vera, pulsey, toona, sage, jack-in-the-bush – all of them had their place and their calling. They fascinated her, their particular strengths and properties, and sometimes people came to her for her apothecary’s skill with them. Ruby could make a treatment for any ailment, and while she couldn’t promise that the poultice wouldn’t smart or that the infusion would taste pleasant – the boiled leaves of the cerassee plant made a particularly disagreeable drink – she believed ardently in their healing powers. When they didn’t work she was apt to blame the patient for their lack of faith.

  ‘Sit,’ she said now, not wishing to sound peremptory, but nevertheless slightly out of patience and sympathy with the silent, suffering Justine, who lowered herself onto the broad porch step. Scotty watched from a distance, with a vague but persistent sense of foreboding. Whether or not she was an obeah woman, she was certainly from Martinique, and that was enough, in Scotty’s book, to make a man wary. He squatted under a cashew tree and took out his tobacco tin, but he had the women in range. Edna, released from the cart, joined him under the tree to escape the flies, and, feeling companionable, he passed her a plug of tobacco, which she took from the palm of his hand with her whiskery lips.

  Ruby knelt at Justine’s feet, and with a cloth and a bowl of boiled water she swabbed the bloody wound, a jagged gash of about two inches long, just below her right knee.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked Justine now, looking up into the woman’s face, which was taut with the effort of not yelping in pain. ‘Did someone push you to the ground?’

  Justine shook her head. She opened her mouth to speak at last, then seemed to think better of it and closed it again. She stuck out her good leg and mimed a small sideways lurch, then gave Ruby a nod of encouragement, inviting her to guess the charade.

  ‘They tripped you up? Is that it?’

  Justine nodded energetically and smiled, a brief, beautiful smile that appeared and was gone, like a moment of sunshine in a sky heavy with clouds. Ruby took up a small sharp knife and sliced a spiny-edged leaf from the aloe vera plant. She pared back the edges of the cut end, revealing as much as possible of the pale jelly inside. Of all her healing plants, this was the one she most revered: the workhorse of her medicine cabinet, the cure-all. She applied the jelly directly to the wound and Justine winced, though she held her leg steady. Ruby sliced again, further along the leaf, and again applied the sap.

  ‘There.’ Ruby sat back on her heels. ‘I’ll bandage that, then we’ll drive you up to Sugar Hill.’

  She made to stand, but Justine suddenly reached for her and held her by the wrist, holding her so that their faces were level. Scotty stood and stepped out from under the arching canopy of the cashew tree, but Ruby knew the woman meant no harm: it was evident in her face.

  ‘Mercy, Madam,’ she seemed to say. ‘Mercy.’

  Ruby, a little perplexed, said, ‘Mercy?’ and Justine smiled again, but shyly.

  ‘Thank you. Very kind.’

  Her voice was faltering and a little hoarse, as though she wasn’t at all accustomed to conversation. Perhaps, thought Ruby, the world was a quiet place when your neighbours took you for a voodoo priestess, and when your native patois wasn’t much use on the island you called home. She pitied Justine: pitied her isolation, he
r situation, up there on the Sugar Hill plantation. There was a man, of course, a husband, Ruby assumed, or perhaps a brother; she didn’t know. He was much older than Justine and far less exotically attractive: lined and just a little stoop-shouldered, though perhaps he was blessed with a beautiful character, which in Ruby’s opinion was a far rarer and more valuable quality. She mistrusted physical beauty in a man: she had learned that it counted for nothing.

  Down by the tree, Scotty watched as Ruby fetched a strip of clean, white cotton and wound it around the gash in the Martiniquan’s leg. She was brisk and tender at the same time, and the sight of her provoked in him a queasy nostalgia, whisking him back thirty years to a scene from his childhood: his mammy fixing up a cut on his forearm with the same expression of concentrated kindness. He looked away, and shook his head to dispel the picture, because memories of his mammy always led to memories of his daddy, an inveterate, rum-soaked wife beater.

  ‘Ruby, come,’ he said now, his voice edged with impatience. ‘I don’t got all de laang day to sit waiting for you.’

  She turned to look at him in surprise. She couldn’t ever remember being ticked off by Scotty. Beside her Justine hauled herself upright. She was taller than Ruby, and the white cotton headscarf twisted into its front knot gave her another couple of inches still. She said, ‘Sorry, sir,’ in her unpractised voice, and began to make her way down the path towards the cart, carrying herself with great dignity despite the pronounced limp. Scotty, feeling a little ashamed, brought Edna out of the shade and backed her into position. Ruby reached the cart and gave him a subtle nudge, undetected by Justine, who was stoically levering herself back into the seat.

  ‘Mr Hitey-Titey,’ she said, and he bestowed his easy smile on her, enjoying the joke.

  The cart bumped on, and though Justine was again entirely still and quiet beside Scotty, the mood had somehow loosened and lifted, so that when Ruby began to hum an old tune, a plantation song, Justine joined in, though with a shy backward glance, as if permission might be needed. Then Scotty pitched in too, supplying the lyrics in a surprising baritone, and they travelled for a while in this holiday spirit, until Sugar Hill drew closer and, as if by prior agreement, everyone fell silent.